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During 2007, Iraqâs civil war reached its apex, with thousands of civilians being killed weekly, highly organized rebel militias controlling huge swaths of territory, and the national army unable to secure control of Baghdad itself. The civil war had taken on a decidedly sectarian nature, with civilians being targeted for death or displacement based on their religious or ethnic affiliations; recruitment into militias occurred along similarly ethnosectarian lines. The US government, independent political analysts, and other regional actors all sought a realistic strategy to end the internecine bloodshed. Partitioning Iraq â the division of the country into separate homelands for the Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shiite Arabs â was one of several strategies given serious consideration.1 While it was not ultimately pursued in Iraq, partition has continued to receive attention in policy circles to address conflicts as diverse as Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Papua New Guinea, while recommendations to partition Iraq continue to emanate from influential think tanks, politicians, and an array of public intellectuals.2
The case for partitioning countries has grown exponentially since the end of the Cold War.3 The civil war in Syria epitomizes partitionâs growing acceptance, with then-Secretary of State John Kerry noting in 2016 that partition might be an outcome the US government could support, and Jamal Khashoggi, in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed, wrote bluntly that, âthe United States should propose partition in Syria.â4
But what does âpartitioningâ a country mean, and how effective is partition at achieving peace? For some, such as then-Vice President Joe Biden, partition in Iraq could be âsoft,â meaning a loose federal arrangement with a weak central government, not too dissimilar to the American model.5 For others, such as scholar Chaim Kaufmann, partition has to be âhard,â involving not only the carving out of new, independent states, but also forced population transfers to ensure âirreconcilableâ ethnic differences are kept permanently separate into the future.6 In a plan proposed for Iraq as recently as 2014, researchers at the Brookings Institute aimed for a middle ground, recommending federal component territories be established in the country, accompanied by âorganized but voluntaryâ population movements.7
As for partitionâs effectiveness, this remains fiercely debated. Despite two decades of research on the topic, with dozens of books, policy papers, and academic articles, there is no consensus on whether partition works. For Radha Kumar, partition has a deeply âtroubled history,â and Michael Knights has called it a âmonstrous idea.â8 Erin Jenne argues that, âpartition theory reflects a poor understanding of the drivers of ethnic war, leading to wrong-headed policy prescriptions,â9 and David Philips points to a deeper objection, with partition running counter to âthe principle of pluralism and democracy.â10 For others, however, partition is âan imperfect solution for an imperfect worldâ11 and âthe only hopeâ for some intercommunal conflicts. It has also been characterized as a conflict regulation tool that has demonstrated a âmeasured successâ in much of South East Europe.12
From national self-determination to ending wars
Part of the problem is that the goals for partition can be highly varied, making an evaluation of whether âpartition worksâ challenging. For Pakistanâs Ali Jinnah and other nationalists seeking self-determination, the goal of partition may be âfreedom and independence,â and partition works when this is achieved. For other nationalists, whose homelands are being divided, that same partition is a violation of national self-determination, rendering partition a failure.13 Although questions of national self-determination are important, those are not the focus of this book. In fact, I explicitly exclude cases of partition during times of peace.
I look at partition from the perspective of policy-makers tasked with ending civil wars, and, in this context, the goal of partition is usually twofold: (1) an end to the raging violence and (2) a âlasting solutionâ to ethnic conflicts, designed to bring an enduring peace. Defining success, even on these criteria, can often still be elusive. Ending the violence and finding lasting solutions come at a cost, but what price is acceptable for victory to be declared? Many partition advocates have promoted population transfers as a necessary condition to establish peace. Even on this mark, however, modern partitionists frame the argument in humanitarian terms, presenting a choice for the international community: as ethnic cleansing is occurring anyway during these conflicts, creating humanitarian corridors protected by third-party soldiers would at least reduce human suffering. As John Mearsheimer wrote in The New York Times,
Wouldnât it make better sense to move populations peacefully rather than at the end of a rifle barrel? ⌠Wouldnât it make good practical and moral sense to organize and plan the border changes rather than to allow the chaos of war to decide them?14
Others have tried a utilitarian approach, calculating the number of lives saved, judging a partition âsuccessful if it avoids more deaths than it causes.â15
In this book, I focus on partition as a solution specifically to ethnic and sectarian wars, asking whether separating people and territories can help bring those wars to an end and maintain peace. My research is motivated by the enormous suffering of civilians that occurs during civil wars â the deaths, maiming, rape, and loss of homes, livelihoods, access to hospitals, clean water, and other essentials needed for life to persist. As such, for partition âto work,â it must end the violence of ethnosectarian war. I contribute to a long line of scholarship on this topic, building on that work to, I hope, refine previous arguments and show with greater precision where partition can have the most impact and where it should be avoided.
Personally, I am opposed to any solutions that involve recommendations that include organized population transfers, whether forced or âvoluntary.â I believe such proposals are abhorrent morally, but also impractical politically, too far from acceptable current norms around human rights to be adopted as policy by most governments that currently have the power to execute such a partition strategy. Nevertheless, I am aware that population transfers to address acute domestic and international crises have been supported by a surprisingly large array of people. As historian Frank has noted, in the twentieth century alone, there were nine Nobel Peace and Literature Laureates who expressed support or sympathy for population transfers.16 This book challenges population transfers for partition from another angle, arguing that they do not succeed in ending wars. Although evidence found in later chapters indicates that partition can prevent war recurrence, population transfers conducted by the international community are not part of that story. In fact, one of the partition arguments in this book is that group separation can be reversed once the anarchy of war has ended.
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The argument in brief
This book makes three distinct arguments about partition: partition cannot end ongoing wars; partition can help prevent war recurrence; and minority reintegration even after partition can succeed peacefully.
First, the book challenges realist scholars, who present partition as a solution to high-intensity, ongoing identity-based wars. Realist scholars recommend establishing âhumanitarian corridorsâ to separate ethnic groups into new homelands, which will end the primary source of conflict. The evidence presented in the coming chapters suggests that partitions with population transfers â even when implemented âwellâ â are unlikely to end wars and, therefore, should not be pursued. Previous scholarship on partition, I argue, has underemphasized the multiple war aims that governments and rebel groups pursue beyond seeking the security of their ethnosectarian kin. The literature has rightly emphasized that armed forces in these conflicts are typically interested in protecting members of their kin group, and that this drives a great deal of the violence and migration in war, but other goals can be equally or more important, especially territorial expansion, control of a perceived âhomeland,â alliance formations, and other strategic considerations. As such, partitioning warring groups without resolving the myriad additional goals being pursued by armies and rebels may provide no peace dividend at all. In fact, contrary to the âhumanitarian argumentâ deployed by some partition advocates, Chapter 3 demonstrates that such population transfers could result in even greater civilian victimization if violence escalates after transfers have occurred.
Based on a micro-level spatial and temporal examination of violence and migration patterns during Georgiaâs 1992â1994 war in Abkhazia, the research reveals a little-known, earlier partition that had occurred in December 1992. That partition separated the militaries and warring ethnic groups and included the use of organized population transfers, but this partition was insufficient to end the violence. Perhaps surprisingly, the research does reveal strong support for many facets of the original theory put forward as justification for partition over the past 25 years, with ethnic security dilemmas during the war leading to a gradual separation of ethnosectarian groups. Nevertheless, as the research will reveal, both sides had war aims that went far beyond the protection of ethnic kin, with territorial goals in particular being pursued for as long as they thought victory was possible. The Georgian leadership aimed to bring territories controlled by Abkhaz forces under Tbilisiâs jurisdiction, while the Abkhaz aimed to expand their territorial control to include all of Soviet Abkhazia, despite knowing that no Abkhaz civilians were living in those yet-to-be controlled by January 1993.
Because of these territorial goals and the belief on both sides that victory was still possible â not because of any ethnic security dilemma â the war continued for another 10 months, with several offensives and minor border changes, culminating in a major offensive launched by the Abkhaz side, supported by elements of the Russian armed forces. This offensive dramatically altered the front lines of the conflict, leading to thousands of deaths and the flight of tens of thousands of civilians as Georgiaâs armed forces lost control of territory. Only this second partition was accompanied by a more enduring peace. In other words, the first partition did not create peace and, instead, was followed by a major escalation in violence for reasons wholly separate from partition. If the evidence contained in Chapter 3 is convincing, then pursuing a proactive policy of separating warring sides into separate states is a dangerous pursuit: it includes all the high costs of a war operation, especially for civilian populations that need to be forcibly moved to new homes, and yet cannot provide the desired outcome of peace.
Despite partitionâs failure to create peace, this book argues that it can nevertheless help prevent civil war recurrence. This is the second argument of the book and is particularly important because ethnosectarian wars have a high recidivism rate, a deadly scourge that has led to millions of lives lost over the past half century alone. Ending the violence of war â something I argue partition cannot accomplish â is, therefore, only half the battle. The violence of civil wars can end for a wide array of reasons, but maintaining that peace once it emerges remains an acute challenge, one that partition is particularly good at accomplishing.
Partitions help prevent war recurrence in three ways. One consistent finding in the civil war literature has been that credible commitment problems are a key reason civil wars last longer than interstate wars. As I argue in Chapter 2, the problem of credible commitment is particularly acute for ethnosectarian conflicts where entire groups of people are potentially at risk if the central state does not honor its commitments. Partition resolves this problem by allowing both sides to maintain their armed forces, transforming an intrastate conflict into a de facto interstate setting. Second, building on the work of pro-partition realists, the book continues to identify anarchy as a key cause of violence in the initial years after civil war termination. The weak state institutions that emerge from civil wars are highly similar to anarchy, while the salience of ethnic identities is high as a direct result of the civil warâs violence, leavi...
